John McAfee, a pioneer of antivirus software, is on the run afteraccusations of murder. He has said he fears for his life if caught byBelizean police, one of the most honest forces in the region.

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / November 14, 2012

Mexico City

Many things stood out when reading the Gizmodo piece on John McAfee, theeccentric pioneer of anti-virus software who is now wanted for questioningabout the murder of a fellow American expatriate in Belize: allegations ofparanoia, his obsession with danger sports, his choice in young partners.(Read the whole piece here – it came out just before the murder wasdiscovered)

But, as a correspondent based in Mexico City who has covered police reformacross the Americas, one part of the story made me do a literal double-take:

“In the wake of his arrest, McAfee was nervous enough about the policeinvestigation that he sent two employees to solicit an officer for insideinformation. Both were arrested for attempted bribery. McAfee then sentanother Belizean on the same mission. He, too, was arrested.”

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Mr. McAfee, who apparently kept company with wanted criminals in Belize, atleast according to Gizmodo, and was under investigation, had dispatchedassociates to the police station to try the get an inside scoop. All threeof those attempts were thwarted.

Really?

The success of bribery, anywhere in the world, depends on the situation,and particularly who is on the receiving end. But it struck me asparticularly salient that in Central America, a place where paying bribesis a way of life, three individuals would be arrested for it.

Is Belize different? One woman who answered the phone at a development NGOin Belize City explained (she declined to talk on the record because of thenature of the case) Belizeans stand out from their neighbors in their trustof the police.

“We do have our share of corruption in the police department, but theycomeout in the news as being investigated,” she says. The police are not, inother words, avoided as they are in other parts of the Americas, such asMexico.

McAfee might disagree. His next-door neighbor, Gregory Faull, was foundshot dead at his own beachfront home in Belize over the weekend. McAfee isnow on the lam, contacting Wired magazine this week to proclaim hisinnocence but saying he fears for his life if he is brought in forquestioning.

“Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in thiscountry," Wired reported him as saying. "You can say I'm paranoid about itbut they will kill me, there is no question."

But a 2010 AmericasBarometer poll does not seem to reflect evidence tosupport that sentiment. In fact, Belizeans have one of the highest levelsof trust in their police. Only Chile and Haiti have more faith in theirpolice than Belize. For comparison, Guatemala ranks the worst, with 65percent of those surveyed saying they believe their cops are often involvedin crime. In Mexico the number is 54 percent; in El Salvador, 48 percent;and Honduras, 47 percent.

Another analyst based in Washington who has studied the police in Belize,and who also did not want to go on the record for this story, said thelevels of police corruption in Belize, a former British colony, comenowhere close to levels in neighboring countries, such as Honduras.

“The standards of policing and rule of law and application of justice aresimilar to what you would find in a British commonwealth,” he explains.

Belize does not just stand apart when it comes to their cops. It’s alsobeen the outlier in Central America both culturally and linguistically. Itis a parliamentary democracy. English is the official language. It is oftenoverlooked when trends about Central America are analyzed. “CentralAmericaLite” is how one CNN travel piece put it.

But in some unfortunate ways it does share similarities with the rest ofthe isthmus. A tiny country bordered by Mexico and Guatemala, Belize sitsat a crossroads of the illegal drug trade and has dealt with spiralinghomicide statistics. In a 2011 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC) global homicide report, Honduras and El Salvador had the highestmurder rates in Central America. But Belize came in third, slightly aboveGuatemala. It’s much higher than the rates in Panama, Costa Rica,Nicaragua, and even Mexico.

In a State Department travel write-up, the the United States characterizedthe situation in Belize this way:

Belize recorded 125 homicides in 2011, a decrease of five percent from2010. Prior to 2011, homicide rates in Belize rose at least five percentevery year since 2000, with the exception of 2009 when homicide rates againdecreased slightly. With a population of only 312,698 according to the 2010country census, Belize’s per capita homicide rate of 39 homicides per100,000 inhabitants in 2011 ranks it as the sixth highest in the world.While the country’s per capita homicide rate is still lower than that ofother Central American countries, such as Honduras, El Salvador, andGuatemala, its year-on-year increase is of concern.

And while Belizeans may have more faith that their cops are clean, theyseem to have little faith when it comes to their efficacy. “I think thebiggest concern for Belizeans is not necessarily corruption as it is lackof convictions,” said the woman in Belize City when I asked aboutperceptions of the police.

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With a tiny population, and a small police force, the country has little tospend on security, allotting just 2.8 percent of gross domestic product tosecurity measures, according to this report.

That means it may have few resources to deal with the spiraling McAfeedrama. Already, police may have missed their best shot of capturingfugitive McAfee. He told Wired magazine that when police came to hismansion to bring him in for questioning but couldn't find him, he wasactually right there –buried under sand on his property with a cardobardbox over his head.